This paper shares our experiences developing a service discovery dissemination mechanism for pervasive computing environments. We explore the problems encountered when designing a solution for IEEE 802.11b ad hoc networks, including the performance of multicast and unicast delivery. We show and discuss results from both high and low traffic scenarios, with nodes in close proximity. We also discuss a small test using a multihop configuration.
Observations in this paper are useful to researchers working in almost any layer of the networking stack who wish to better support multicast and unicast communications in mobile ad hoc environments.